On this weeks Kitchen Table Steve and I discuss my earlier article on Civic Religion
The Kitchen Table 32 – Judgement Day
This is the song I mentioned….
The Blog of David Robertson
The Blog of David Robertson
On this weeks Kitchen Table Steve and I discuss my earlier article on Civic Religion
The Kitchen Table 32 – Judgement Day
This is the song I mentioned….
This fits in well with what everyone is saying on this page.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2018/02/progressive-christianity-beware/
“The first signal (of liberal Protestantism disguised as “progressive Christianity”) is a disinterest, especially among Christian leaders (of congregations, denominations, and organizations) in doctrine.
The second signal is a distinct tendency to replace doctrines, in terms of importance for membership and leadership, with “kindness” and “inclusion” as well as “social justice”—usually for some newly discovered “oppressed group.”…
A third signal is a determination, however, slow and subtle, to accommodate to trends within academic culture—regardless of their fitness with Scripture and tradition. ..
A fourth signal is an elevation of inclusiveness to a virtue bar none (or “par none”) within the church, denomination, and/or Christian organization. Of course, “inclusiveness” is never complete; persons perceived to be “discriminatory” in any manner (language, behavior, sentiment) are marginalized if not ostracized…”
…and so on through various other warning signs.
Great article! 7, 8 and 9 are worth noting.
“A seventh signal is the way in which the Bible is described—not as a supernaturally inspired and unique message from God, possessing final authority for faith and practice—but as “our sacred stories”—different in degree but not in kind from other great and inspiring writings.
An eighth signal is the complete abandonment of belief in the supernatural together with a strong emphasis on the immanence of God in all people. The “imago dei” gets reinterpreted as a presence of God in every human person. Together with this comes a tendency to horizontalize Christian recognition of God’s presence—as totally within historical movements for justice and completely within the “face of the other”—especially the weak, the vulnerable and the marginalized.
Finally, a ninth signal is the adoption of hostile language about groups of human beings who dare to defend traditional values. They are often lumped together with racists, bigots, oppressors, “fundamentalists,” and even “red necks” solely because they hold to traditional “family values” or express the opinion that too much is changing too fast…
As in fundamentalism, within many progressive Christian circles an echo chamber develops. In this one, though, those “out of touch” with the latest trends… are effectively silenced. There develops a “fundamentalism of the left” that is not really inclusive at all.”
That reflects my experiences precisely.
By rejecting doctrine and by following the cultural mores of the day, the Progressive Christians remind one of Judgrs 17-6: “… Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” They have rejected the Spirit-breathed Scriptures in an attempt yo follow what their own deceitful, sinful, “rational” minds tell them is the right thing to do and have made idols of tolerance, welcoming, love and diversity. Instead of the True God of Israel, they have fashioned a lopsided god in their own image.
The problem we have in Anglican Church Southern Queensland is that so many of our priests have gone down this “Americanised” liberal Catholic route: Jeremy Greaves, Peter Catt, the Inkpins, Sue Wilton, Chris Tyack, Ann Solari, Kate Ross, Jeanette Jamieson-Foard, Rodney Wolff, Richard Fay, Moira Evers, Julie Leaves, Tiff Sparks, Julia van den Bos, and Cameron West, to cite just a few names that immediately sprung to mind, are all heavily invested in promoting Progressive Theology.
I’ve heard about Moira Evers at the Anglican Parish of Buderim and Jeanette Jamieson-Foard at the Anglican Parish of Kilcoy and the Anglican Parish of Maleny from when I used to live on the Sunshine Coast. Yes they are very ‘liberal Catholic’ in their theology. I won’tvrepear what I’ve heard but they definitely both tick points 1, 2, 4, and 9 and probably others. Moira is more relativist in her religion and Jamieson is more autocratic.
Here’s a great article by Steve McAlpine about Martyn Iles of the Australian Christian Lobby standing up to defend orthodoxy against the beliefs of this cadre of heretical Anglican priests and their secular-liberal counterparts in wider society. 》https://stephenmcalpine.com/martyn-iles-a-good-racer-not-just-a-strava-king/
Yes, I’ve met Rev JJF. She struck me as very arrogant, sadly.
Caloundra seems like a funny old church. I haven’t been there but they count weddings, confession and so on among their sacraments, instead of limiting them to the Biblical two, so they seem to be Anglo-Catholic:
https://cgca.com.au/sacraments/
They also offer the Alpha Course according to their website though, so go figure.
This pew sheet by Jeanette is interesting:
http://www.malenyanglicanparish.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/21st-Sunday-after-Pentecost.pdf
She’s promoting a charitable endeavour with donations being blessed by none other than APCVA’s Ray Barraclough.
Also, her quote of the week (from an Anglo-Catholic monk) is also insightful:
The program set out in the Gospels is clear: love God and neighbour,
heal the sick and raise the dead (at least figuratively), pursue justice,
feed the hungry, let the oppressed go free, have faith in the reconciling
power of God, live in confident hope of the resurrection to even greater life.
Br. Mark Brown SSJE
If raising the dead is only meant figuratively, does this apply also to the resurrection to even greater life mentioned at the end of the quote? If so given that Jeanette is quoting this approvingly, this puts her firmly in the same camp as her APCVA friends Barraclough and Catt.
Spike, APCVA’s Ray Barraclough did some preaching at the Maleny Parish, so, yes, JJF is well-connected with the Progressives.
Progressive Christians seem to thrive in the inner city and wealthy rural parishes-ie, anywhere where there is money… They aren’t so popular in the poorer, workkng-class areas. Progressive Christianity is an indulgence for the wealthy.
I am baffled by the quote you cited, too. Maybe raise the dead figuratively simply means to be born again. It is interesting that these Anglo-Catholics pick and choose what they take from the Church Fathers though – didn’t Irenaeues talk about raising the dead in a very literal manner? If they only believe in raising the dead figuratively, it might mean they are tying themselves to the Progressive Christian stance of denying the bodily Resurrection, especially with the presence of an APCVA priest lke Barraclough and a known liberal like Jamieson in the parish, but it could be interpreted in different ways too. It is a little ambiguous. Of course, sometimes these Progressive Christians only hint at things too since there would be too much of a backlash from some quarters in their congregations if they stated exactly what they believed. I don’t know if Jamieson is an APCVA member though, liberal though she is. God bless.
Here us a recent woke letter by Ray Barraclough by the way, ranting against the PM’s speech at the Pentecostal Conference on the GC:
https://ucforum.unitingchurch.org.au/?p=3795
The part about welcoming everyone but “fundamentalists” in that American pastor’s podcast is illuminating.
I can’t find the link now but I once read a Progressive Christians’ website where they said not to worry about losing mainstream Christians from your congregation when you preach your heretical ideas because they are bigots and only hindering your church’s growth. (Yes, truly!)
There are a lot of problems in that diocese. I’m glad I live O/S now so I don’t have to worry about it directly anymore. I’ll pray for you all.
Bad theology (ie Prog Christianity) and bullying are the two most pressing problems. They claim to be welcome but they are not if you don’t tow the liberal anglo-catholic line. They need a back to basics approach with a focus on proclaiming the gospel and living out Christlike values to restore their church.
The Baptist fundamentalist man’s sermons were surprisingly good, as was the Lutheran’s. Thank you.
Yes, I know cases myself – in both the Uniting and Anglican churches – of faithful, lifelong parishioners being driven out by liberalising ministers. So much gor being ‘welcoming’.
It is sad to see churches destroy themselves with this bad theology.
I heard Hans Küng died a few days ago. Did he have any influence on Progressive Christianity? He doesn’t seem to have done from what I can tell. Their main Catholic influences seem to have come from Raymond Brown (in his early phase when he argued against the historicity of Christmas; he backtracked a bit later on) , Teilhard de Chardin (mystical view of evolution and the universe) and the atheist ex-Catholic priest, John Dominic Crossan, who was a very prominent figure in the Jesus Seminar. As far as I can tell, they haven’t drawn on Herr Küng’s thinking. I wonder why.
I think the fad of progressive Christianity will soon disappear. It doesn’t have enough substance to have “legs”. Most liberal Christian movements have been short-lived and progressive Christianity is one of the weaker ones. As postmodernism morphs into supermodernism (which is already happening) its time will pass.
All things will fade but God’s Word alone will last forever He promises us!
From your latest blogpost tonight:
“The fact is that Western liberals tend to think (though they dare not say) that most Africans are a bit less enlightened and not so far down the progressive road as they are. There is a condescension and patronising attitude of (largely white) Western liberals, which suggests that once Africans accept Western (white) ‘liberal’ values, then they will be truly ‘equal’ and deserve their place at the table.”
Progressive Christian and Episcopal Bishop, John Shelby Spong, 1998, on Africans:
“They’ve moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity. They’ve yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face in the developing world: that is just not on their radar screen.”
SOURCE: https://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/looking-down-on-africa
The Bible is very inconvenient for the Ptogressive Christians. No wonder they try to minimize, twist, ignore or reinterpret everything in it. It reminds me of a Roman Catholic priest before the Reformation who, on reading a Bible for the first time, is reputed to have said, “I know not this book, but I perceive that everything in it is against us.”
Likewise, the Bible is the greatest testimony we have now against the false teachings of the Progressive Christians.
Jesus saved his harshest words for the hypocrites and false teachers. He is more opposed to the wickedness of the Progressive Christians than any of us ever could be. I tremble gor them on the Day of Judgement.
It is so sad. All these Ptogressive Christians have to do is have faith and let the Word of God work in their lives. It really is that simple but they are not willing to do that. I will pray for them that God may yet transform them and open their hearts.
The APCVA try to conflate salvation and well-being in a truly bizarre tweet:
https://mobile.twitter.com/APCVA/status/1381629754445455368
Since when has Peter Catt ever really cared about anyone’s well-being apart from his own?
Ths latest APCVA tweet is very revealing:
“Any person endorsing “a good war to sort this out.. because society would not be so concerned about climate change or gender identity if we were at war with China” does NOT represent mainstream Christianity. #ACLdoesNOTspeakforme”
https://mobile.twitter.com/APCVA/status/1381618848311349252
However, when we look at the linked Sydney Morning Herald article, this is what the quote says in full:
“In a later panel discussion, Mr Iles joked that his father often said “we need a good war” to sort this out and “there’s a little bit of truth in that”, because society would not be so concerned about climate change or gender identity if we were at war with China.
Mr Pellowe then interjected: “We’re not advocating violence or revolution … today.” Mr Iles added: “Not yet, that’s down the line.””
https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-our-turn-inside-the-christian-right-conference-plotting-a-political-takeover-20210303-p577fv.html?__twitter_impression=true
It seems like Peter Catt has learned the tactic of “mental reservation” very well from the Jesuits by his selective quoting and misrepresentation of what was said. When we see the quite in full, we can easily discern that Mr Iles and Mr Pellowe are joking and furthermore, Mr Iles is actually quoting the joke from his father.
That’s not to say that the joke isn’t in bad taste, particularly at a Christian Conference: we should never wish for war even in a jocular way, IMHO. However, ss Mr Iles notes, there is a “little bit of truth in that” in so far as war does force people to look at the big picture, reassess their priorities and focus on what is really important in life.
As the Tweet stands, Peter Catt has clearly borne false witness against Mr Iles and the Australian Christian Lobby by twisting what was said to make it seem as though Mr Iles was seriously endorsing war. This shows just how reprehensible and immoral Peter Catt and the Progressive Christian crowd really are.
This is evidently where you arrive if you throw away Biblical morality and reject the Ten Commandments. Woe betide these hypocrites if they do not repent. 🙁
Thanks for this post. I’ve read the tweet at the source and the Sydney Morning Herald column. You are spot-on. Thanks for exposing the APCVA’s disingenuous claim.
It is a bit trust-destroying to see church ministers brazenly distort the truth like this merely in order to further their political agenda. It shows just how lacking in substance APCVA is to have to lie like this to slur ACL in an effort to gain supporters.
When we see clergy bearing false witness like this so openly in public, we know something has gone very, very wrong with their theology and morals and that these are people NOT to be followed or trusted. Unfortunately, some of these people have previous form with the false propaganda clsims they presented in the lead up to the SSM plebiscite and the coverup of pedophilia in ACSQ as documented by the Royal Commission.
I will pray sincerely that Peter Catt, Tiffany Sparks and their APCVA colleagues repent of their sins and come to Christ one day to be saved. We know Church leaders are judged more strictly than the rest of us, so they desperately need Christ’s forgiveness for their trampling of Biblical truths and now the truth of what their rival said.
The Lutherans have attacked the false teachings of the Queensland Anglicans a second time. Listen from the 6 minute mark:
https://bit.ly/3xkRv7C
That’s a nice sermon but it also raises a question in my mind: since the Progressive Christians like the Brisbane Anglicans emphatically do not believe in the bodily resurrection and bodily ascension of Christ, what is thrir attitude towards the eucharist? I see on the cathedral sermons and the Jeanette Jamieson-Foard pew sheet that they refer to it as the “mass” in keeping with their Anglo-Catholicism. Do they believe they are re-sacrificing Christ, a la the Roman Catholics? Gregory Jenks’ denial of the sacrificial nature of Christ’s death seems to rule this out. Do they believe in transubstantiation? Well, if they have trouble believing Christ physically rose from the dead, they would surely have even more difficulty believing He is in the wafer and wine. Therefore, in what sense is the Brisbane Anglicans’ celebration of the Lord’s Supper specifically a “mass”?
Further to that, are they in full communion with the Roman Catholics? I know down here in Victoria the Anglo-Catholics are not.
Roman Catholics surely wouldn’t recognise a eucharist that doesn’t include transubstantiation, would they, and without a bodily resurrection and ascension, the belief of the Progressive Christians – as explicitly stated by John Dominic Crossan in one of his books – is that Jesus’ body decayed in the ground somewhere. Therefore, I assume any Progressive Christian belief in Jesus’ actual presence in the eucharist is mystical or spiritual at best and not bodily. More likely, perhaps they see it as just as a community bonding ritual.
They’ve certainly opened a can of worms for themselves there…
I can’t answer your questions about the eucharist but here is a sample liturgy for Progressive Christians that gives some pointers.
It is just as tacky as everything else the Progressives come up with:
“bread, no doubt,
and wine, for sure –
laid out by the women;
the invisible women out in the kitchen
sharing secret women’s business,
while the blokes share stories and yarns
about their travels”
It is also interesting that they keep on calling Jesus Rabbi as well throughout, theteby downplaying His Lordship and divinity.
https://ucforum.unitingchurch.org.au/?sfw=pass1621254548
Thank you for bravely speaking out. I have no time for Peter Cattwjom I consider to be an archhypocrite.
Here are some of his recent tweets –
‘APCVA
@APCVA
·
Apr 16
Christian misogyny is still misogyny. “When did feed the hungry, heal the sick, and liberate the oppressed become ‘subjugate women, vilify the poor, and demonize the LGBTQIA+ community?’” #auspol #religiousfreedom #marchforjustice #Christianity’
Noble sentiments if he actually lived them. Unfortunately while he puts on a pious façade I know he cares neither for the poor nor for opponents of pedophilia. He has a heart of stone. He’s concerned only with his own vanity ptojects, chief of which is the reputation and function of the cathedral.
‘APCVA Retweeted
Rosa Parks
❤
Rainbow flag
@palmboy4444
·
Apr 24
Another option is that #Australia could be heading towards becoming a #theocracy
#auspol
Quote Tweet
Tao de Haas
@TaodeHaas
· Apr 24
I had breakfast with a friend who has been following Politics for 50 years who believes that democracy is in its death throes and that in 20 years AU will be a dictatorship. Thoughts? #auspol’
This one is truly bizarre. I know Catt is a crank abd that APCVa attracts all kind of oddballs and fringe thinkers, mainly ckergy who reject orthodox, doctrinsl Christianity, but are they really so paranoid that they think thocrats are really likely to take over Australia – especially at a time when religious adherence is in freefall? Apparently so. It shows what a strange, insular workd these peolle live in if they really believe a ‘fundamentalist’ (i. e., mainstream) group like the Australian Christian Lobby is plotting to take over the country!, no doubt working in cahoots with ScoMo and a secret cabal of other right-wing members of the Liberal Party to do so!
It sounds like these cranky progressives have been watching too much Handmaid’s Tale if they think Australia is in danger of becoming a theocracy. They are living in fantasyland.
I used to be an anglican. I am glad God rescued me. Jeremy Greaves and Peter Catt are killing the church with this nonsense. The idea of doctrine-free Christianity is toxic too.
Peter Catt’s very unusual daughter, Aimee Catt, is spruiking same-sex marriage on her wedding photography website:
http://www.aimeecatt.com/journal-1
She is a vegan to protect the environment. She tells us all about herself but there is nothing about any religious beluefs:
http://www.aimeecatt.com/about
The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree there.
No doubt from his previous comments on Folau, persecuted Christians and so on, Peter Catt will applaud Justin Welby for turning his back on his “homophobic” priest in this case.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9582499/amp/Fury-Archbishop-Canterbury-turns-chaplain-reported-terror-unit.html?__twitter_impression=true
🙁 🙁 🙁
iuutad a loo at the latet tweets from the uber-liberals that people have been quoting.
Accirding to Bower you shouldn’t pray for someone without their consent:
https://mobile.twitter.com/FrBower/status/1386614163930173442
So when Jesus prayed for his enemies or asked His Father to forgive them, for they know not what they do, He was evidently being bad according to the atheist-priest Bower.
As for Peter Catt, he’s been retweeting a gay activist’s semi-blasphemous attack on the pm, complete with an f-word in the hashtag. What happened to honouring our leaders? Oh, that’s right, progressive christians fon’t obey the bibke. They are pick ‘n choose cafeteria christians who just slavishly follow cultural fads.
https://mobile.twitter.com/APCVA/with_replies
“refugee children in prisons”
Hyperbole, much? Nauru is not a prison.
Since when has Peter Catt ever cared about prisoners – or about children anyway? I think the victims of priestly child abuse have a different view of the anglican church.
Here is a Progressive Christian who has convinced himself, on pure conjecture, that Jesus was gay, and even includes a rainnow Jesus illustration in his article. 🙁
https://ucforum.unitingchurch.org.au/?p=3780
They are rejecting His deity by making these claims, for they are saying He is not of the same character as the God who condemned homosexuality and punished Sodom and Gomorrah. This is also the same Jesus who advocated sexual purity and told the woman caught in adultery to “Go and sin no more” and warned us that even the lust of our eye is a sin.
I just read this statement by Peter Catt:
“There is no need for a Religious Freedom Bill. There are many people throughout the world who are persecuted for their faith. To align oneself with them in the current Australian climate is self-indulgent.“
https://www.progressivechristians.org.au/articles/media-release-no-need-for-religious-freedom-bill
He is completely out of touch with what is going on in Australia. Christians are losing their jobs left right and cemtre unless they tow the corporate line on same sex and transgender rights. Of course, as a heretic with no regard for standard Christian morals and a known advocate of the gay lifestyle at the expense of his fellow Christians Catt would no doubt support these moves by the corporates.
We must pray for those who persecute us. That includes this Diocese.
Come out from her and find a Biblical church to attend instead but still pray for her and for her apostate priests so that some of them might still be saved.
The reason Bower and Peter Catt are launching furious Tweets against the PM at the moment is because he was at an Australian Christian Churches conference on the Gold Coast on the weekend and, while he was there, he publicly testified to his own Pentecostal brand of *Biblical* faith. That is anathema to these guys.
Worse still, from their point of view, the PM launched another attack on identity politics while he was there, the same identity politics that os the bread and butter of these Progressive “Christians” since they gain their publicity from promoting the cause of every fringe minority group they come across, no matter how hnrepentantly sinful they may be.
We live in strange times when the PM is more Biblically-faithful and a better role model than many priests around the country.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-13/doubts-raised-qld-judges-links-to-anglican-church/9417048
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-12/paul-de-jersey-accused-conflict-of-interest-abuse-law-review/9400742
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-17/anglican-church-ashamed-child-sex-abuse-royal-commission/8363126
That should tell you all you need to know about ACSQ.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/qld-anglicans-put-money-before-morals-sex-victim-20090622-ctwy.html
“The Anglican Church’s refusal to scrap an age limit for child sex abuse claims shows the church is protecting its money rather than its flock, says an abuse victim.”
I can’t believe the way these Brisbane Anglicans dishonor God with their preaching and unethical behavior. 🙁
Thanks for this discussion. When I used to walk past the cathedral and I saw the electronic sign flashing advertising gay pride services, I wasn’t sure if they were naively liberal, trying hard to be trendy or something worse.
Between attacks on the ten commandments, promotion of Jesuism, bullying, unethical behaviour and hypocrisy by priests and the sexual abuse cover ups, and especially the spiritualist homily and the denial of the bodily resurrection I can now see the Brisbane Anglicans are pure evil.
Praise be to the Lord that I attend a church where the bodily ascension is preached literally!
Yesterday’s sermon on the ascension had me thinking though: it is all very well for Catt to be “embarrassed” by it and to reduce it to the level of metaphor these days but what do he and his disciples make of the lines “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”
If they reject a bodily resurrection and ascension, what do they make of the Second Coming?
What do they make of the end of the age? Do they think history will just culminate in Catt’s Progressive/Greenie liberal utopia on earth?
More pseudo-inellectual waffle from Catt in yesterday’s sermon:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HfHmXuFvldCT-BAa0RhzzVyZTwmepjQU/view
Without doctrine, they have to retreat into mysticism. I wonder how he rose so high in the church – he must have baffled the powers-that-be with his empty verbiage.
He tries to force a false dichotomy between contemplative prayer and petitionary prayer when even the earliest Christian prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, has petitionary elements (‘give is this day our daily bread’).
You can also see the very low view of scriptute coming through – a focus on speculativetheories about how the Johannine community produced the text that bears John’s name rather than a belief it is Spirit-breathed or an engagement with what it actually says.
There is no depth at all to what is being preached do I can’t see the Cathedral community sustaining itself in the long term. I think it will continue to decline due to this poverty of though.
Well, this is revealing. Here is an excerpt from Gregory Jenks’ latest sermon:
“As a teenager this metaphor freaked me out. In my conservative Evangelical church being fruitful meant converting others to believe like us. The pressure was on: to avoid being pruned and burned we needed to go get converts (“bear fruit”)!
BTW, we were not speaking about bringing people to faith for the first time. This was mostly about persuading Anglicans and Catholics to switch across to our little Evangelical sect, renounce their infant Baptism and their sacraments, and start all over again in the Christian life with us.”
Like Marcus Borg, Jenks seems to be reacting against a childhood trauma caused by bad catechizing and his own misunderstanding of scripture, leading to a vast overreaction and wish to reinvent the entire religion in his own image. In Jenks’ case, he was apparently a member of some kind of fringe Baptist group.
It seems like they don’t want to accept that they (or their preachers) just misunderstood things at that stage of their development, nor do they want to become atheists. Instead they seek to create a new religion in their own image that meets their own psychological needs and the political correctness/identity politics they find confort in. These are damaged, unbalanced people, foisting their own psychological wounds and neediness onto everyone else.
Here is another recent Jenks sermon, on the theme of Anzac Day:
https://gregoryjenks.com/2021/04/24/living-in-two-worlds/
As discussed by others above, although liberals, these people are no pacifists. There is no hint of protest or critique of Anzac Day or the Anzacs themselves in his sermon.
Sorry, I forgot to add the link to the first sermon I cited:
https://gregoryjenks.com/2021/05/01/true-vine-authentic-holiness/
From your blog post today – “One BBC commentator spoke about the ‘educated’ and ‘the uneducated’ – with the obvious implication being that the more educated were more intelligent and more likely to vote the ‘progressive’ way.”
Yes! and that is exactly the same arrogant attitude as is being displayed by Peter Catt and the Progressive Christians. It is ironic that they consider themselves more educated and intelligent then orthodix Christians when as people on here have noted Prog can best be described as an anti-intellectual movement.
They are creating a religion that would be unrecognizable to the Early Christians or any of our forebears in the faith up until the last few decades. It is pure innovation and has nothing to do with the faith Jesus taught the Apostles.
Catt’s obscurantist preaching is deliberately elitist and would be unintelligible to the early Christians with their limited education while also serving the dual function of hiding the fact he has very little to actually say and even then a schoolchild could poke holes in those arguments.
God bless.
These Anglican priests will have to answer to God one day for what they are doing.
By rejecting the bodily resurrection of our Lord and saying it is a metaphor for a sense the disciples had that He lives on with us in spirit, the Progressive Christians seem to be conflating the events of the Resurrection and Pentecost. How is this notion of Christ “living on with them in Spirit” in any way distinct from the coming of the Holy Spirit? Do the Progressive Christians consider the Holy Spirit and Jesus to be two separate persons of the Godhead? If so, what differentiates Their roles in their eyes?
The Progressive Christians don’t seem to have developed any thoughts on pneumatology at all.
Yes their is their anti-intellectualism on display. They haven’t thought any of these questions through and yet they are able to climb up to positions of great power in the church hierarchy…
Thanks for this thoughtful discussion and analysis. You’ve given me a lot more insight into all of the crazy things that have occurred in the diocese in recent years.
It seem like most Progressive Christians either had bad church experiences in their youth (Borg, Jenks), are eccentrics, are hypocrites or crooked priests or are people who don’t want to face up to their own sins (Tiffany Sparks with her teen pregnancy, the homo priests and transgenders like Inkpin). It seems more like they are trying to convince themselves of their fringe ideas than anything else.
I’ve been shocked and dismayed at the descent of Anglican Church Southern Queensland into mad liberalism over the last 15 or so years. Thank you for talking openly about these issues.
The sermon on the 10 Commandments particularly shocked me. The ‘Christian’ leaders in the Cathedral are openly advocating the destruction of Christian civilisation.
Peter Catt’s “embarassment” at the Ascension reveals just how Anglo-centric his thinking is. Germany, Austrua, Scandinavia and, until recently, South Africa, celebrate Ascension Day as a public holiday. This is how important a day it is in their relihious calendars.
Shame on Peter Catt and Anglucan Church Southern Queensland for being embarrassed by this event and trying to explain it away! If they are ashamed of Chrisylt, He will be ashamed of them. I tremble for these arrogant, worldly-minded religious leaders when they face Christ’s judgement.
My take on this is as follows: Peter Catt and the Anglican Church Southern Queensland Progressive Christians are exhibiting an extreme form of postmodernism where there is no fixed truth at all and everything is relative. Therefore they feel like they can change the “narrative” to say anything they want to suit a culture at a particular time and place. Essentially it gives them a free hand to make things up since they don’t believe there are any fixed truths in religion. They assume the Resurrection and Ascension stories don’t suit our culture, so they twist the meanings to say something else – that they are just mystical metaphorical stories that have to be reinterpreted for us in more “plausible” ways for today, never mind if they actually happened or not. This is actually a common popular misunderstanding or abuse of what the postmodern philosophers taught.
The second thing is that Catt and co display elements of what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery”, a belief that we know more than the ancients, just because we live later than them: Never mind that Luke spoke to witnesses about the Ascension or that Christians from circa 33 ad until now believed in the bodily Resurrection as an historical event – we know better than them that it couldn’t have happened and they were just superstitious primitives, so we will have to explain what really happened as they had trouble articulating their mystical truths. Likewise, they had primitive beliefs about homosexuality and us more enlightened and sophisticated ones can jettison the superstitious and harmful ideas they held and the same with the Ten Commandments and its harmful, patriarchal assumptions. After all, these people are “Progressives” so society must have progressed and we must now know more than people did in the past, right? Right?
The problem is their assumptions that there are no fixed truths, that the Bible is not ultimately the inspired word of an omniscient God but the writing of flawed men who were more primitive than us, that the now long-outdated ideas of structuralism and the “Death of the Author” movement were correct after all and that readers are privileged to reinterpret texts anyway they want, that the Bible, including the Gospel miracle stories do not record history but rather metaphorical stories of mystical truths that can be reinterpreted any way we want, even though they hace always been considered historical narratives, that there is not an eternal, unchanging law of God, that our society today is superior to past “patriarchal” cultures, that we know more than ancient people about human nature, such as the effects of homosexual activity on a society, and that the literal readings of the Bible of Jewish rabbis, the early Christian Antiochean school and all the Reformers were wrong and that the fringe scholars of the Progressive Christianity movement alone have seen the truth that they are metaphors containing mystical truths that they can reinterpret to give them relevance for contemporary society. Therefore, this movement attacks God’s sovereignty, the notion that scripture is Spirit-breathed, the historical understanding of Scripture and all Christian morality and doctrine and ultimately the underpinnings of society itself. It not only endangers the salvation of the individual but undermines western civilisation and that is what they want, since sociery is too patriarchal and homophobic and transphobic for them and has imperiled the environment. They think we need to “progress” beyond western society and they alone know the way forward; that feminism, gay rights and so on are the future we are progressing towards. They somehow know, without saying how, that this is a progression and not a regression.
They also call for increased religous syncretism since there is no universal truth in this distorted, populist misunderstanding of postmodern thought. Therefore, they imply, Jesus cannot be “the way, the truth and the life” since there is no ultimate one fixed truth and there must be many ways to God. Therefore all religions are valid paths to God and speak to the different respective cultures in which they originated and westerners are now free to draw on a mish-mash of religious ideas, including as fiscusseed in this thread, the New Age and blatantly occult ideas being utilised by some priests in Anglican Church Southern Queensland.
The preaching of the Bible’s historicity (with suitable proofs and arguments to convince the sceptic) and timeless morality are they keys to defeating this movement. The arrogance and falsehood and hollowness or superficiality of its claims must be displaued to its disciples. The reasons for the Bible’s exalted place and proofs that it is Spirit-breathed and of universal application in all times and places and that the accounts of the Resurrection and Ascension are depictions of historical events, fixed in time, and that condemnation of homosexual activity is part of God’s timeless miral law must be proven to these people. They need to be freed from the obscurantism and sophistry of the likes of the Peter Catts and Gregory Jenks and Ray Barracloughs of this movement in order to be saved, as these wolves are imperilling their souls and impeding their relationships with Christ.
It is funny that the ‘Progressive’ Christians reject all the gains we made with the Reformation and are pushing us back into the obscurantism of (Anglo) Catholicism. They are more reactionary than they realise.
The transgender, Jo Inkpin, is back in Brisbane to do the latest cathedral sermon. He comments on God’s lack of love and compassion for humanity in Ezekiel:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IQs0NIDFjX0CqDtdZ1riaqJvwhU7iQpT/view
In last night’s semon, Suzanne Grimmett attacked the doctrine of mske headship and offered a false dichotomy between God’s sovereignty and power and tge notion that God is love:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fVhu7svnozxTRsj5f124TgU-dEyRvBOZ/view
Addressing the serios social problem of domestic violence does not require is to undermine key Biblical doctrines as Grimmett asserts. Sadly,, it seems more like she is using this issue as an excuse to undermine mainatream Christian belief.
This quote alone is enough to refute the false teaching and bad scholarship of the Progressive Christians:
“The notion that Jesus was resurrected in a totally spiritual sense, while his old body lay in the grave, is a purely modern conception. First-century Jewish thinking would never have accepted such a view and that is not how Jesus’ Resurrection was proclaimed in the earliest accounts. It would have been impossible for Resurrection claims to survive in the face of a tomb containing the corpse of Jesus.”
Barnett, P., Jensen, P. and Peterson, D., Resurrection: Truth and Reality, Aquila Press, Sydney, Australia, p. 14, 1994.
“offered a false dichotomy between God’s sovereignty and power and the notion that God is love”
Don’t these people realise Jesus is not like earthly kings who lord it over their subjects? Don’t they realise he is a humble servant king and the Prince of Peace? Don’t they realise his yoke is easy? These are the kinds of things we were taught in Sunday School so it is shocking these ordained ministers don’t seem to understand these basic facts.
If this fear of power relationships and hieratchies is taken to extremes, there would be no teacher and disciples, just a group of peers. Are these people seeking to ultimately put themselves on the same level as God because they don’t accept his sovereignty over them?
The Brisbane Anglicans have a close relationship with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brisbane. With Roman Catholcism’s very strong emphasis on authority and hierarchy, I wonder what they think of all these dangerous ideas from the Progressive Anglicans. Couldn’t this put their relationship at risk?
Of course, we know in practice Archbishop Philip Aspinall, Bishop Jonathan Holland and friends gave no compunction about pompously lording it over people and thst, as others on here have noted, thee is a culture of bullying in Anglican Church Southern Queensland.
“The notion that Jesus was resurrected in a totally spiritual sense, while his old body lay in the grave, is a purely modern conception. First-century Jewish thinking would never have accepted such a view and that is not how Jesus’ Resurrection was proclaimed in the earliest accounts.”
From what I gather, the Progressive Christians do believe in the Trinity on some level. Catt, for one, discusses the Trinity in a sermon. If so, i assume he thinks Jesus is a Deity and part of this Trinity but who knows if they are playing word games and redefining terms? At any rate, denying the possibility that a body can be resurrected is putting a limitation on God’s omnipotence. By definition, he is therefore no longer God if he is not omnipotent. The Progressive Christians’ god then is a false god. If he cannot raise a dead body he is not the master of creation.
Their faith is so hollow and empty it is no wonder they have turned to ritualism, spiritualist practices, new age and yoga. What they are missing is Biblical faith, faith in Christ and faith in the Resurrection and faith in a loving, benevolent but righteous Father and Sovereign God. I am frightened fir them, like others have said. What will happen to these false teachers at the final judgement if they don’t turn to Christ and accept him as Lord? They are resistant to the very idea of his lordship. They reject yhe resurrection. They oppose all traditional Christian morality. They reject the very fundamental tenets of the faith but have the temerity to call themselves Christians and work as ministers in his church. I just hooe some will repent of their hypocrisy and find true faith and be saved while there is still time.
God bless.
“The notion that Jesus was resurrected in a totally spiritual sense, while his old body lay in the grave, is a purely modern conception. First-century Jewish thinking would never have accepted such a view and that is not how Jesus’ Resurrection was proclaimed in the earliest accounts.”
Exactly!
Now here is what Catt and his APCVA colleagues in Anglican Church Southern Queenskand have to say:
“One of the things that kills religion is a failure to understand how myth operates. If you try to turn the myth into historical reality you lose the beauty and teaching-ness of it, because it becomes useless to you. Because sensible people know that’s not what happened. ”
https://www.progressivechristians.org.au/podcast/toxic-or-liberating
That is an interesting theory until you realise it has absolutely zero historical support.
The Antiochean School believed the Bible to be literal fact and interpreted it in that wat. The Alexandrian School interpreted the Bible on an allegorical levelIN ADDITION TO the literal level of historical fact, NOT in place of it.
Luke explicitly says at the outset that his two part text of Luke-Acts is history. Of course, readers are not bound to read the text in the way the author states but they end up with bizarre interptetations if they treat it as a mythical story.
“A myth is not an untruth. It’s a something that didn’t happen that happens all the time. It’s a colourful way of describing our humanity. We know there wasn’t a historic Adam and Eve 6000 years ago in a particular garden…”
The Brisbane Anglicans’ friends in the Roman Catholic Church strongly disagree. They directly state that Adam and Eve were real people and that the Fall was an historical event:
“It is prohibited to believe that there were multiple first parents, many sets of Adams and Eves. This position is called polygenism. It is a teaching of the Catholic Church that there was one set of parents, and it was they who committed an offense against God, and that offense has had lasting effects for mankind. This is the doctrine of original sin, the sin that occurred at the origin of the human race. C. S. Lewis argued that the existence of original sin is perhaps one of the most obvious facts of human life, even to non-believers.
Those who hold that there were multiple sets of first parents go against the teaching of the magisterium on the doctrine of original sin. In fact, there are even logical difficulties in accounting for original sin if that calamitous falling can’t be traced to a single man, Adam.”
https://www.catholic.com/qa/given-the-evidence-for-evolution-are-catholics-required-to-believe-adam-and-eve-existed
Mainstream Protestant denominations that accept theistic evolution as a possibility do mostly accept the historicity of Adam and Eve, just as the Roman Catholics do.
The closest historical equivalent I can see to the Progressive Christianity movement is some strands of Jewish interpretation emerging in the writings of the Talmud hundreds of years after the Biblical era, perhaps Maimonides and then Reform Judaism which emerged in the 1800s and came to focus on social justice in the 1970s. Come to think of it, with their rejection of Christ’s resurrection, perhaps the Progressive Christians would find what they want in Reform Judaism as it seems to have anticipated their needs and beliefs. Why try to reinvent the wheel with Progressive Christianity? At any rate, the idea that the Biblical writings were written as myths not history is incorrect when applied to the Jews of Jesus’ era and the early Christians. The writings they produced were not intended by them to be understood in this way. Theirs was a religion firmly rooted in the acts of a God who intervenes in human history.
The Progressive Christians are duplicitously introducing anachronistic methods of interpretation to these texts that were written as accounts of God’s literal interventions in history. God bless.
It’s the oldest semiotics trick in the book isn’t it? Retain the signifiers but switch what is being signified.
In other words, the Progressive Christians keep all the external trappings of religion like the rituals and terminology but change what they represent, including ‘resurrection’. They then claim to be following tradition while creating a radical new religion. They are even changing their stances on social issues to positions that are radically anti-Christian such as their endorsements of homosexual and transgender lifestyle and their mooted endorsement of euthanasia.
Add to that the attacks on the very foundational idea of the existence of Christian doctrine by the likes of Jeanette Jamieson and Peter Catt and you come to the postmodern notion that there is no universal truth and that all things are relative. Hence they feel comfortable with overturning 2000 years of Christian moral teaching to fit in with the social mores of the culture of the moment or the latest scientific ideas. It is a desperate attempt by these worldly preachers to follow fads and be fashionable for they afraid of lookkng foolish in the eyes of the world or making a stand for what is just and right.
Catt’s cowardice really came to the fore for me in the Israel Folau controversy and everything he has done since then has highlighted his hypocrisy, his weakness and his promotion of anti-Christian behaviours and ethics. I have lost all respect for that weak little man. He might be small in stature but he is a real moral pygmy. He is more concerned about how he and the church look in the eyes of the world than in teaching truth. He promotes every perversity and wickedness rather than standing up for what is true and right and his hypocrisy and lack of care for the poor and weak, all while giving them.lipservice support, is there for all of Queensland to see.
“Add to that the attacks on the very foundational idea of the existence of Christian doctrine by the likes of Jeanette Jamieson and Peter Catt”
🙁
“Doctrine is the soul of the Church for quickening” – John Calvin
“Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” – God, speaking via Paul, 1 Timothy 4:16
Also fir Peter Catt not from the Bible but from the very early church (Epistle of Polycarp):
“whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord for his own lusts, and says that there is neither resurrection nor judgment, — this man is the first-born of Satan.”
Home from work here in the Victorian lockdown so I’ve spent the morning perusing Peter Catt’s online sermons and writings.
What really strikes me is how all of his thinking is rooted in materialism. He says he sees the spiritual but the examples he gives are always based in nature: biology, alleged evolutionary processes, quantum physics, etc.
He is utterly lackkng in imagination and faith when it comes to the supernatural. He rejects the idea of the devil as a supernatural being and can only conceive of “it” as a force that motivates (and is motivated by) crowd behaviour, he cannot accept the bodily resurrection, he cannot accept the ascension and finds the whole notion “embarassing” and he cannot accept a God who intervenes in the world through miracles. He is singularly lacking in any imagination whatsoever that he apparently cannot perceive of these things at all. The thought even crossed my mind that perhaps he lies somewhere on the Asperger’s Spectrum but that is purely speculation on my part and I sm definitely no clinical psychologist.
At any rate, it is little wonder that he believes in a panentheist god since all his thinking is rooted in nature/materialism and he finds the supernatural elements of faith embarassing. No wonder he also uses the crutch of Anglo-Catholic ritualism and New Age practices since his faith is do hollow he needs to ground it in material practices to somehow express it or maybe even seek to control or influence the material world around him, as practitioners of magic or the occult seek to do.
No wonder also he is so focused on progressive politics in the here and now, seeking to build a utopian “Kingdom of God” (or Kingdom of Catt rather in his own image) rather than on the future New Jerusalem. He simply has no willingness, desire or maybe even ability to conceive of an afterlife at all, his imagination and faith are found to be so wanting. No wonder his mind is so focused on worldly things as he is simply unwilling to believe in the World To Come. He therefore focuses on the concrete world in front of him, even if he reads spirituality and mysticism and myth into it. You can easily see how his faith has become so errant, based only on the sinful natural world and a rejection of anything supernatural or miraculous in Scriptures as pure myth. Hence also his low view of scriptures, that they are communuty-produced only and a product of their cultures and times and not Spirit-breathed (for that would be the supernatural encroaching on history!) Therefire, he feels comfortable to arrogantly ignore what scripture teaches on homosexuality and transvestism. (If nothing else, this is chronolohical snobbery, as Catt thinks he onows better than those “communities” and thinkers of the past that allegedly produced these texts. He therefore thinks his modern, rational scientific thinking is superior, though such knowledge may – and will – change again tomorrow. Ultimately, he is just a fad follower.)
I don’t know whether is influenced by the old 19th C. German liberals in their failed attempts to demythologise religion or perhaps he is a former Marxist, some of whom now have a spiritual yearning having gound their purely materialist conception of reality sadly lacking. Neither answer would surprise me, especially the latter with his strong Green/Liberal Left tendencies. At any rate, his lack of imagination and belief really disturbs me in that he is such a limited man in his ability to think. Whatever he believes, it is not something that can be called Christian.
Ultimately, he is a very sad little man lacking in faith and imagination and unwilling to face up to his own shortcomings, he arrogantly takes on leadership positions in the church and leads others astray.
“He is utterly lackkng in imagination and faith when it comes to the supernatural. He rejects the idea of the devil as a supernatural being and can only conceive of “it” as a force that motivates (and is motivated by) crowd behaviour, he cannot accept the bodily resurrection, he cannot accept the ascension and finds the whole notion “embarassing” and he cannot accept a God who intervenes in the world through miracles. He is singularly lacking in any imagination whatsoever that he apparently cannot perceive of these things at all…
At any rate, it is little wonder that he believes in a panentheist god since all his thinking is rooted in nature/materialism and he finds the supernatural elements of faith embarassing. ”
God has granted you great insight. I think this really is the key to his mindset.
“The thought even crossed my mind that perhaps he lies somewhere on the Asperger’s Spectrum but that is purely speculation on my part and I sm definitely no clinical psychologist.”
Maybe. I am not sure. He has definitely displayed some odd mannerisms on the occassions I have met him but I just put that down to his eccentricities.
” I saw Peter Catt wrote an article about his protest grandstanding at the Brisbane Arms Expo while Jean noyltes upthread she never sees him or any of his compatriots at her Anglican anti-war events. Seems he just likes to grab the headlines.”
Sigh. Aside ftom Catt’s blatant hypocrisy the trouble is that people see a bunch of “feral-looking” Green rabble rousers and one priest known to be a fringe crank at these pritests and it puts peolle right off the anti-war movement. If you had fifty “respectable-looking” people in suits and ties quietly protesting you would attract many more people to the cause than if you have 100 inner-city Greenies causing damage. Catt and his Greenie mates just serve to alienate the outer-suburbanites and the average working class or middle class voter with their actions. 🙁 It just reinforces the cliche that all pacifists are far left vandals and rent-a-crowd types. This is a far cry from the when Christian pacifism was mainstream in the 1930s, which is where I’d like to see the movement go back to, rather than the radicaliam of the 1960s.
To be honest, seeing Catt and his Greenue mates there causing trouble was enough to make even me throwing in the towel and think Wee Flea is right with his Just War theology. After all, Catt’s views are so toxic and wrong in every other regard, I started to have doubts and think perhaps he is wrong about Christian pacifism too. I can therefore all too readily see how everyday people not involved in this work would be totally alienated by the protestors. It is like how the Greens squandered all support for their Adani mine protests when Bob Brown led his ridiculous Greenie caravan up to north Queensland and it had the reverse effect helping the liberals win the Federal election. The Greens certainly are good at shooting themselves in the foot.
However why should I let this poisonous little man, who is only borderline Christian at the very best, undo all the hard work we have done though? It is the innocent civilian victims of war who will suffer if the potential for mass opposition to the arms trade and military are always undermined by fringe activists on the radical left and hypocrites like Catt and his Progressive Christianity group.
It is just a very sad and frustrating situation.
To paraphrase William Shakespeare, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Peter Catt, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Great points, Dave. All you say is true but what I’d like to add is that he isn’t really preaching to a wide audience. He uses obscurantism to hide the paucity of his thoughts. The trouble is this also serves to aluenate large potential segments of his cathedral audience, like those with limited education and children. He is really only speaking to those with the same background as himself, not to a wide audience and certainly not to Bible-believing Christians.
Yes, there is lots of hypocrisy in Anglican Church Southern Queensland. I saw Peter Catt wrote an article about his protest grandstanding at the Brisbane Arms Expo while Jean noyltes upthread she never sees him or any of his compatriots at her Anglican anti-war events. Seems he just likes to grab the headlines.
Likewise, as others have noted, Catt seems fine with this protest, including damage to property, but he calls the cops when people protest at his cathedral. Sheer hypocrisy.
I think the point has come, though, where people are seeing through all of Peter Catt’s nonsense and Philip Aspinall will have to get rid of him, since he is becoming a political liability to the Archbishop.
‘I saw Peter Catt wrote an article about his protest grandstanding at the Brisbane Arms Expo’
Well judging from the article he’s not a pacifist in the normal sense. He seems to be antiwar and antiarms trade but very prosoldier. Talk about having your cake and eating it too! He doesn’t have the courage to take his beliefs to their obvious conclusion. I guess that would be too radical for him and it would potentially alienate his supporters. His article’s here. https://anglicanfocus.org.au/2021/06/02/talk-of-our-noble-sacrifice-and-losses-to-the-wooden-crosses/ By his presence at the protest it also looks like he endorses the vandalism done by the protesters. He doesn’t denounce their destructive activities or distance himself from them in his article at any rate. I hope he wasn’t egging them on. Either way his actions are disgraceful.
Peter Catt’s sermon for this Sunday again demonstrates his very low view of scripture:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VaaCdJnjs1ZVqTBiKfZUpVyFWwxGnsyi/view
There is an emphasis on scripture as man-produced, self-conflicting and ambiguous in his unorthodox view.
Now “A Progressive Christian Voice Australia” is promoting the “Stolen Generations” scam as well:
https://mobile.twitter.com/APCVA/status/1397362516360011784
It is interesting that ministers who actually spend large parts of their career working in Aboriginal mission stations all say the notion of a “Stolen Generation” is a fraud promoted by the welfare industry.
This begs the question of APCVA and Deborah Bird then: are they hopelessly naive idealists who have been taken in or are they knowingly promoting a scam for either political or financial advantage? I honestly don’t know the answer. Either way it is really worrying and says a lot about the quality of Anglican priests up in Queensland if they cannot research basic facts in a non-partisan way.
It is also upsetting to see the Aboriginal welfare lobby continuing to bear false witness against “white people” with what really happened to the so-called “Stolen Generation” and continually slurring the memories of our ancestors who had the best interests of Aboriginal people at heart and frequently saved them from drunken, abusive or neglectful parents.
it sounds like nothing has changed in Anglican Church Southern Queensland since I was there.
Mark, in my personal experience, the bullying and threats have become worse since Bishop Jeremy Greaves took over from Jonathan Holland on the northside. Holland was a political operator but he was actually a lot more tolerant than the Progressive Christian Jeremy Greaves is.